The Lost Guide To Life And Love Part 18

'Tilly,' he said, putting his hand up to stop me. But I was unstoppable.

'I thought you were different, Clayton Silver. I thought, I really thought...' I almost sobbed at what I had let myself think. But I'd been wrong, hadn't I? I should have stuck to my original opinion of Clayton Silver-as a self-obsessed show-off. Just like so many of them, with more money than sense and certainly no sense of responsibility, not even self-respect. Why had I let myself be misled? Just because he had a nice smile and liked to invest in paintings, I'd built up a picture of the sort of man I wanted him to be, a picture I'd painted myself and wanted to believe.

'She's right,' I said. 'You're a cheating b.a.s.t.a.r.d and a pathetic specimen of a man.' I was angry with him, and angry with myself, furious and disappointed and hurting so much that it had turned out this way. A small thought at the back of my brain reminded me that Jake had been right after all. That was the final straw.

I turned and fled.

There was a chorus of whistles and catcalls and I could hear Clayton somewhere shouting, 'Tilly! For G.o.d's sake.' But it was too late. I was running out of the h.e.l.l-like room, out of the oak and antlered hall, past the drunk and laughing footballers, past the high-cla.s.s tarts, past the waiters with their foaming cups of bright green liquid and their dead men's eyeb.a.l.l.s and dead men's fingers and the awful awfulness of it all, out into the night where the cold air hit me like a slap.

I stood there in the light from the entrance hall, wondering what to do next when I heard Becca's voice, 'Tilly? Is that you? Do you want to come with us?' I could just see her, standing in the mist by the open door of a waiting car.

'Oh yes, yes please!' I said, almost crying as I ran towards the car. Desperate to get away from Clayton Silver, and even more desperate to escape from the seedy, squalid, sordid world he'd lured me into.

Chapter Twenty-One.

I huddled in the back of the car, wrapping Matty's tiny jacket round me.

'What happened in there?' asked Becca, concerned. 'Are you all right?'

'Fine. Fine,' I lied.

'Where's Clayton? Aren't you...?'

'No.'

I knew I was being rude but I just couldn't begin to explain. Not yet.

'Ah,' said Becca and, to cover my silence, started prattling on about the party, the tarts, the people, the drugs. She was worrying about the girls that she'd seen disappearing with some of the footballers. 'I hope they're all right,' she said. 'They seemed so drunk. They could hardly get up the stairs. Maybe I should have-Hey, Sandro! What are you doing?'

The car had lurched heavily. Sandro was peering through the windscreen and I realised he could hardly see where we were going as the thick fog swirled round the car. It m.u.f.fled us, like a huge damp blanket pressing down. I pushed further into my corner and tried to get Clayton out of my head. But my head was full of him and the strange menacing scenes from the party. Halloween parties are meant to be scary. But this had been different. A very real unpleasantness.

The car b.u.mped again and seemed to slither across the road. Sandro swore and rubbed the windscreen in front of him, trying to see where he was going. It made no difference.

'Where are we?' I asked.

'I'm not sure,' said Becca, her voice anxious. 'We shouldn't be far off from the main road and the turning back up to Hartstone by now.' The car b.u.mped and lurched. There was a sickening sc.r.a.ping sound. 'But it doesn't even seem as if we're on the road. Careful, Sandro! You must be going into the ditch. Get back on the road! We'll stop, see exactly where we are. Unless you've taken the wrong turning.' She peered through the thick fog that seemed to be pressing down on us ever more. 'I can't see where we are. There doesn't seem to be an edge...I don't think we're on the road. You've gone the wrong way.' Her voice was getting increasingly anxious. 'We're not even on the road, we're on a track. Stop so we can see. Sandro! Stop! Sandro!'

It was the last thing I heard. Becca's voice soaring, screaming, as the car left the track and plunged into nothingness. For a brief moment there was a feeling of exhilaration as we lost contact with the ground. 'We're flying!' I thought ridiculously as Becca screamed.

I was thrown forward and s.n.a.t.c.hed back by the seat belt. But I seemed to be upside down, swirling into the fog. Then there was a huge bang and a crash of metal as the car hit a rock and bounced, knocking my head against the window and rattling my teeth together. Then it lurched up into the air again, wavered for a second and then crashed on to its side and slid round with a terrifying grating noise. There was the sudden awful sound of smas.h.i.+ng gla.s.s and a rush of cold damp air into the car. It rocked for a moment, then shuddered to a stop.

Silence. Darkness. No screams. No shouts. Just grey, damp, suffocating silence. And the fog filling the car, bringing the Halloween night in with it.

I don't know how long I lay there, unable to move, unable to think. It could have been seconds, minutes, even an hour. But the silence went on.

I was lying on the side of the car, almost upside down. I could feel the door handle pressing into my hipbone. The car was on its side, the door on the ground. I moved myself slowly, experimentally. I could feel my toes. I wiggled them. My fingers too. My head hurt and, when I tried to lift it, I yelped as my neck hurt too. But I could move it. That had to be a good sign, didn't it? The seat belt was tight round my throat, almost choking me. I couldn't work out where it was fastened so that I could undo it. I had no sense of the right way up, or round, or anything. I put my hand round the belt at my throat and followed it down. Or up. I found the fastener but couldn't remember what to do. Did you press it or what? I prodded around ineffectually for a while, and then suddenly it slipped free. The pain in my neck eased a little as the belt loosened, but I found myself falling further into a crumpled heap behind the driver's seat. But if I tried gently, ignoring all the pains in different bits of me, I could get a grip somewhere and heave myself up.

There! Done it. I was sitting on the door, leaning against the seat.

The others! What about the others? I pulled myself up and I could just make out Sandro in the darkness. His head was resting on the smashed gla.s.s of the driver's window, his face jammed up against a piece of rock. I reached my fingers out, delicately, gingerly, frightened, to see if I could feel him moving, breathing. I felt something wet and sticky on his face, on my fingers. Blood.

Oh G.o.d. Becca was slumped on top of him, her body hanging from its seat belt, her head lolling.

Please don't let them be dead. Please don't let that have happened.

What should I do? I couldn't think. I knew I had to be calm and sensible but I seemed unable to think where to begin.

I moved carefully, frightened that the car would s.h.i.+ft, but though it groaned spectacularly it hardly moved. It was jammed on the rocks and stuck in the side of the hillside. The engine was off, the lights out. Before I could do anything I would have to get out. I tried to move in the cramped s.p.a.ce. Various bits of me screamed in agony, but it didn't matter. What mattered was getting out.

I had to get help. That's it. That's what I had to do. But how? I moved around carefully so I could reach towards the other door. As I groped my way along the back seat, I realised I was groping through piles of plastic that had fallen on top of me. The pumpkins!

Suddenly, in a moment of clarity that later I could never understand, I remembered that the pumpkins were lanterns. I picked one up, embraced it in my arms and felt gently round it. There! A tiny switch. I pushed it and the car filled with a horrifying orange glow from the grinning jaw and empty eye sockets.

And I giggled. G.o.d forgive me. With Sandro and Becca lying there I giggled at the sight of the pumpkin. And I started shaking. I always wondered what people meant when they said their teeth chattered, and now I knew. My teeth were off on a dance of their own and my body was shaking so much that I was almost in convulsions.

But with the glow of the lantern I could find the door handle above me. I reached up. It clicked open and I managed to push the door up and open. I wriggled round and freed my feet. I had no idea how far it was to the ground. I inched myself out and then dropped. The car hardly rocked at all. My legs buckled underneath me and I found myself kneeling on the wet gra.s.s. I stretched back into the car and got the pumpkin and stepped carefully round to see Sandro.

He was breathing. Thank you, G.o.d. But his head and his throat were surrounded by ragged shards of gla.s.s and metal. Just the slightest movement...I needed to smash them off, if I could do it without disturbing Sandro. I tried pus.h.i.+ng it with my hand but the gla.s.s and the pain just sliced into my fingers. I battered it with my elbow and that worked for a moment, but Matty's silk jacket was no protection. I needed something to bash with. The broomstick! There'd been a broomstick, hadn't there? I groped around the floor of the car, located it, and used it to smash as much of the gla.s.s away as I could and then wrapped a plastic witch's cloak into a cus.h.i.+on and gently slid it between Sandro's neck and the window. Just in case. He made no noise but he was still breathing.

Where there's life, there's hope.

I couldn't work out how to get to Becca. I couldn't get through the driver's door, obviously, because Sandro was there. But with the car up on its side, I couldn't reach her from the pa.s.senger door either. With that I heard her moan and mutter something.

'Becca! Becca!'

She groaned and, in the light of the pumpkin, I could see her eyes flutter open. 'The car's crashed,' I said urgently. I don't know where we are.'

Becca moved her head. 'Eerrggh,' she said. 'My shoulder...my arm...'

I looked more closely in the light of the pumpkin. Her shoulder seemed to be sticking out at a strange angle and her arm was dangling down oddly towards the gear stick. I'm sure it wasn't meant to be that short of shape.

'Don't move, Becca,' I said. 'Don't worry, I'll sort something out.'

I scrabbled round in the back of the car. I didn't think my phone would work, but it had to be worth a try. I thought I'd felt something warm and woolly in there too. A blanket maybe. I hauled it out. It was a stylish coat. Sandro's, I guess. I flung it over Becca so it also draped over Sandro as well. I piled some witches' cloaks on top of them. The thin plastic might keep out some of the damp.

'There. That will help keep you warm.' I thought of undoing the seat belt, but then Becca, her crazy shoulder and arm would collapse right onto Sandro. No, I would have to leave her as she was.

Back in the car I had felt something leather. Clayton's jacket. I suddenly remembered what had happened. How he'd proved to be a cheat after all. But I couldn't afford to have principles right now. I shrugged into the jacket, noticed almost automatically, even in my strange state, the luxurious softness of the leather, and relished its warmth around me. There were witches' hats, but I couldn't think of anything to do with them. Devils' horns. I switched them on too. Only a little flickering glow of red, but it might help someone find us. More pumpkins. I found the switches and lit them. Maybe someone would see us. Find us.

At last I found the thin strap of the tiny bag I'd brought out with me. I felt for my phone and switched it on. Its screen lit up but there was no signal. 'No network coverage,' it said. And I sobbed.

Then it dawned on me, horribly, crawlingly, like the fog creeping into the car, that no one would look for us because no one knew we were missing.

The party people-if they had even noticed, let alone cared-would just a.s.sume we'd gone home. People at home would think we were at the party. If we didn't come home, they would presume we had stayed there, that we were having a riotous time. It could be hours, maybe even days before they raised the alarm.

How would Sandro and Becca last that long? How would I?

One of those blessed samplers flashed into my brain again. G.o.d helps those who help themselves.

I would have to go for help. But where? Which way? I had no idea where I was. I could be trailing the moors for hours. There were rocks, cliffs, bogs and mine workings. Even in daylight I could get hopelessly lost. But in the dark and the fog, I stood no chance at all. But what else could I do? There were still seven hours until daylight. Becca and Sandro needed help. Sitting here panicking would help no one. Maybe somehow I could get back to Ravensike.

I picked up the pumpkin and limped slowly round the car. Even a yard or so away, the shape of the car was almost swallowed up by the fog; all I could see was the stupid orange glow of the pumpkins. But even in that eerie light I could see the steep hillside above me. We had come over the sheer drop of a small cliff. I could make out the scars where the car had sliced off the gra.s.s at the bottom, but above were just rocks. There was no way I could get back up there. Dejected, I turned down, the other way.

I was wearing party shoes that scribbled and scrabbled and sank into the moorland. I stopped and wanted to cry. Really, it seemed to be the most productive thing I could do right then. But holding the pumpkin, as I inched past the car wheels in the air, I peered down. Maybe there was something a bit firmer there...Tricky to see, but maybe there was a sort of path. It could, of course, just be a trail left by the sheep, but no. There were stones and cobbles, worn smooth. It was a path.

Well, that was a start. But where did it go? I hobbled a few tentative steps and thought I could make out a shape in the fog. A wall, perhaps? Right up close, I could see the outlines of a ruined building. That was something. But which one? There were scores of them round here. But there was a path. Ow! I'd walked into a tree, a narrow branch had whipped sharply across my cheek. Like a razor-cut in the cold. There were virtually no trees up on the moors and yet I'd managed to walk right into one. Brilliant. I held the pumpkin lantern up so I could see more clearly to avoid it. Crab apples. There were tiny wizened crab apples hanging from the branches. As I looked at them I remembered that sharp, sour taste when I had bit into one. And there, just out of reach, hanging from a twig, was a piece of something fluttering in the fog.

I couldn't reach it. I tried to stand on a stone, hold on to the tree, but it was out of my reach. But I'd bet my life that it was a piece of cherry-red velvet ribbon and that this was the ruined house at the bottom of the valley I had pa.s.sed on the day I had met Matt. It had to be!

Well no, actually, it didn't. It was probably a chocolate wrapper abandoned weeks ago by a walker. But there was a chance. My only chance. I hung the pumpkin from one of the twigs of the tree, which was so weedy that it bent right down under its weight and took most of the light with it. I took off one of my shoes and slithered on the stones as I reached up, right up and...yes! I hooked the heel over the thin branch and brought it back just within reach. As I grasped the fluttering piece of material, the branch whipped back out from under the shoe and up out of the eerie orange circle of the pumpkin light. The material in my hand ripped away and I was left holding just the tiniest sc.r.a.p of it. But it was enough. As I rubbed it in my fingers, I didn't need the light to know that this wasn't a chocolate wrapper but velvet ribbon.

It was the same tree I saw that day I met Matt. It had to be. The building seemed right. The broken wall, the crabapple tree. I had to believe it. I rammed the ribbon into the pocket of the leather jacket. My brain, which had previously been numb, suddenly went into overdrive. I tried to remember which way I had approached the house that day. Think. Think. I had come this way...and reached that way...and seen the house...here, and the tree there...So if I faced that way, I should follow the path along the valley bottom and eventually get back to Kate's house.

Could it be that easy? It would mean that Sandro had tried to drive along the path I'd walked when I b.u.mped into Clayton on the day of the helicopter ride. That did make a sort of sense. That he'd veered right instead of left when he'd gone through the gates in the fog.

I groped my way back to the car. Becca's eyes were open now. 'Are you OK?' I asked.

'No,' she said, which sort of proved she was really.

'I think I know where we are,' I said. 'I'm going to get help. I've left you the pumpkin lanterns.'

'Don't be silly,' said Becca, her voice slurred. 'Too dangerous. You'll get lost...Arggh!' She had tried to move and was now gasping with pain.

'It's the only way,' I said. 'I think we're in the valley bottom near the Aldersons'. I'm setting out. Tell you what,' I said, struck by a brainwave, 'I'll take some of the witches' hats and drop them on my way. So if I've gone completely the wrong way, people will know which way I went.' Becca looked at me. I don't think she knew what I was talking about. Then she winced in pain. 'Sandro?'

'He's unconscious but he's breathing. And the bleeding seems to have stopped,' I said.

I clutched the pumpkin and the witches' hats and set off. I had gone only a few yards when the car and the pumpkin lights vanished in the fog. I was utterly alone, swallowed up in the vast expanse of whiteness. The weight of the fog seemed to press right into my lungs, making it hard to breathe. There was nothing to take my bearings from. I was a city girl, used to neon and street signs and pavements. But here there was nothing. I could feel panic rising, rising until I wanted to scream. But I didn't. I fought it down. G.o.d helps those who help themselves. I dropped the first hat. I knew, whatever I did, I must not turn round. I had to keep walking in the same direction, otherwise I could end up walking round in circles. I kept my feet firmly facing the same way. I walked slowly, carefully, my feet slipping out of my party shoes, slithering on stones, sinking in the ruts as I followed the path. It was little more than a narrow stretch of flattened gra.s.s with occasional smooth stones. Sometimes I thought I was imagining it, that it wasn't there at all. But I tottered and tripped and slipped on. Occasionally I switched on my mobile, which gave a narrow shaft of clearer light. But I was saving that in case I got somewhere where there was a signal.

I tried to remember how far it was to the farm. No more than a mile, I reckoned. If I was on the right track. Twenty minutes. Yes, twenty minutes on a nice flat path with trainers and in daylight. Not in strappy shoes in fog with only a dim orange glow. Ow! My foot turned over. Pain shot through my ankle. Maybe I should try walking without my shoes. But it was so cold, the stones so sharp and wet. I limped carefully on, glad of Clayton's jacket. But the skirt of the T-s.h.i.+rt dress was now damp with the fog and clung to my legs and their thin tights, now ripped to shreds. I couldn't stop s.h.i.+vering.

But I just had to keep going. There was nothing else to do. Every few steps got me closer. If I was going in the right direction.

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Arghh. My heel caught in something and I crashed to the ground. Pain jarred through my wrist and up through my shoulder. I sat there for a moment, feeling utterly defeated. A sheep bleated and made my heart race. Its eyes glinted yellow. I was surrounded by these glints of evil yellow light. I gasped and struggled to my feet again, abandoned my shoes, clutched the pumpkin and carried on.

By now I couldn't feel my feet. They were like bricks on the ends of my legs. Solid, heavy, frozen and very difficult to move. Pain shot through my ankles and into my legs. I felt curiously light-headed, remote from it all. I almost hypnotised myself by counting. A mile was around 1,500 metres, wasn't it? And I was taking about three steps to a metre, so that was 4,500 steps. I counted backwards. It was harder; it took concentration. I found I was stuck on 2,378 and couldn't think what came next. But while I worked it out, there were a few more steps made.

I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. I seemed to have spent my whole life slipping and tripping through the fog on this apology for a path, but now there seemed to be something up ahead. I stopped trying to work out what came after 2,378. 2,278? 2,780? Too difficult. A cl.u.s.ter of shapes loomed out, darker than the fog around them. Buildings? Then a small light spread a dim glow on the surface of the fog. Then there was a questioning bark from a dog, followed by another. Suddenly there were dogs going mad. It was a house. Definitely a house. Lights went on somewhere in the fog. A window inched open. My heart lifted, I could have sung with happiness.

'Anyone there?' I heard. Even m.u.f.fled in the fog, I recognised it. It was Guy's voice.

'Help!' I yelled as I stumbled towards the door. 'Please help!'

The door opened and, still clutching the last witch's hat and the plastic pumpkin, I collapsed into the Aldersons' back kitchen. For one hysterical moment I wanted to shout 'Trick or treat!' but then managed, 'Home, I'm home.'

Kate and Guy scooped me up and, amazingly, made sense of my burblings. Within seconds, Tom and Guy were out with the quad bike and the Land Rover and torches. Kate loaded them up with blankets and rang 999. I could hear her voice, calm and precise, giving directions, telling them what had happened. How had she managed to translate my rambling gibberish into something so sharp and clear?

She was wrapping me in blankets and lifting me onto a sofa. She coaxed the fire back into life and brought me something hot to drink. I was still s.h.i.+vering. Even though I was warm, I couldn't stop. Now my feet had thawed, the pain was excruciating. Kate held the cup to my lips. Suddenly I hadn't the strength to hold it. Ruth and Zak came down and were given instructions to keep the fire blazing and to make sure I was comfortable, while Kate got dressed and waited for the paramedics and the fire crews to arrive. And she went with them along the dale to find Sandro and Becca.

I'd done it. I'd made it. Help was coming. It was all other people's responsibility now. As I gazed at the very real flames now licking up from the hearth, and as I began to feel the first inkling of their warmth in my s.h.i.+vering body, I gave up and slipped gratefully into a state between semiconsciousness and sleep.

Later, in the ambulance, as we headed down the dale to the hospital, I heard a lot of cars whizz past in the opposite direction.

'Police,' murmured one of the paramedics to his companion, 'and lots of them too. Wonder where they're going at this time of night? Something's up.'

Suddenly, we heard a strange noise, a huge bang, an explosion, followed by another. Groggily, as I lay on the stretcher, I looked through the ambulance windows and I could see in the far distance a bright glow exploding through the blanket of fog and colouring the whole night sky a vivid, burning red, as though the world was on fire; as though the world was ending.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

Simeon Maynard was dead. He had died as dramatically as he had lived, in an explosion that had lit up the night sky for miles around. The police racing up the dale were on their way to Ravensike to arrest him on a long list of charges including tax evasion, fraud and money laundering. But he and one of his henchmen had grabbed as much cash and as many of their papers as they could and tried to flee in the helicopter. Witnesses said that as soon as it took off it was swallowed up in the fog. Within seconds there'd been a huge bang. The helicopter had hit power lines and then crashed into the fellside, the resulting flames visible for miles even through the fog. That was the red glow I had seen from the ambulance. They reckoned Maynard had nearly half a million pounds in cash in the helicopter with him. For weeks afterwards, walkers would find scorched fragments of twenty-pound notes fluttering on thorn bushes.

Jake had been right all along about him and his dodgy empire and now his research paid off. His background stories filled the newspapers and it made his name. Flick presented a TV doc.u.mentary, hastily brought forward to a prime-time spot. That was based on Jake's research too. She did well. They did well.

They'd also managed to speak to people who'd been at that party. But here they had to be more circ.u.mspect. The police might have been after Maynard and had the effects of a helicopter crash to deal with, but they still found time to arrest a couple of footballers and their girlfriends on drug charges. There was also an allegation of rape. I wondered uneasily about the giggling girl being led up the stairs by two men.

Becca and I had plenty of time to read about it as we shared a hospital room for the next week. Becca had a broken arm, a broken shoulder and various other sprains, bruises, wrecked muscles and, to top it off, pneumonia. To my surprise I found that I had escaped with a badly sprained wrist, two sprained ankles, a lot of torn ligaments, numerous cuts, bruises and gashes. And pneumonia.

'Next time you take a midnight hike, please don't do it in bare feet,' said the nurse as she did the dressings. 'You were very brave, but also very stupid and extremely lucky.' I winced and nodded and dutifully swallowed the tablets she was now pa.s.sing to me. I felt as if an elephant was standing on my chest as a pony kicked me between the shoulders. Every breath was a ma.s.sive effort.

'I've put your clothes in the cupboard. Well, what's left of them. The dress looks pretty well ruined, but the silk jacket might be all right. Just as well you had that leather jacket or you might not be here at all now.'

I wheezed gratefully.

Then she bent her head down close to mine. 'And I've wrapped that necklace in a paper towel and put it in the pocket of the leather jacket. Make sure you get someone to take it home for you as soon as you can, or it will vanish.'

'Yes, I will, thank you,' I wheezed again, and tried to find a position in which I could breathe.

Sandro had a broken arm, severe concussion, but no pneumonia, and had been wheeled into our room for a few moments before the club had flown him down to London. It had all been very emotional and incoherent as the three of us were in no state for anything at that stage. He was now in a swish private hospital, was doing all right, but wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

As for Clayton...there was no word. In all the reports of the goings-on at Ravensike Lodge, the only mention said that leading goal-scorers Jojo Francois and Clayton Silver had been at the party but had left early and long before the police had arrived.

I felt curiously detached from it all. Whether that was the disappointment of finding out that Clayton wasn't the man I had thought that he was, or whether it was because of the pneumonia or the drugs, I don't know. All I knew was that I just wanted to be able to get back to some sort of normality.